BRUBAKER,BRUCE - Codex (Sealed) (CD)

A dialogue between Terry Riley's Keyboard Study No. 2 (1964) and the Codex Faenza, a 15th century manuscript considered to be one of the very first collections of keyboard music. By putting forth the work of the performer/creator above that of the composer, this back-and-forth takes the listener on a journey that is at once timeless and eminently current. In 1964, in the American West Coast city of San Francisco, composer Terry Riley invented American repetitive music. Based on improvisation, his studies are loosely articulated around the free combination of a series of melodic cells of different lengths, giving the pianist the freedom to use them following a freeform protocol. Codex includes the very first acoustic piano versions of Terry Riley 769;s seminal piece. The Codex Faenza created circa 1420 and rediscovered in the 1930s, became an object of fascination for harpsichordists, organists and pianists the world over, as one of the oldest keyboard scores to have survived. This is it?s first recording on piano. The American pianist intertwines them on one album, working out their textures to bring out their differences the Codex Faenza's quasi- declaratory, rhythmically-unstable dimension contrasting with Riley's metronomic ostinatos as well as their similitudes, in particular their rhythmic ambiguity